This and that...and tit for tat

Unlike a lot of other posts that you have read on this blog, this one is going to lack a theme. These are just ramblings. I have been meaning to write but events have been out pacing me and the sudden heat that has come over North India a little too early has sapped my stamina and patience a bit. So have the mosquitoes. Summer comes and I turn into an anopheles swatter. For the first time in many seasons I did not even have the energy to stay up late and watch Barcelona and Bayern Munich play in the Champions League.

What keeps me going though is Lalit Modi's circus. The 8pm daily dose of bat hitting the ball is not exactly just and pure cricket but it is entertaining none the less. And I am a sucker for it. This season I am specially hooked. Because it allows me to watch Tendulkar in action for a few more weeks. I have been watching him since he hit those sixes of Abdul Qadir in 1989 and this frankly has been his best year - perhaps even better than 1998. Another player whom I sit in front of my television to watch is Anil Kumble, who ironically is India's best T20 bowler at the moment, at a ripe age of 39. Besides Kumble and Tendulkar, giving the timeline and conventional T20 logic a bit of a spin is Jacques Kallis, who seems set to keep that hideous looking orange cap on his head for the remainder of the tournament. And while T20 is compulsorily required to be all about sixes, fours and batsmen carting the bowlers around, I have taken a few sighs of satisfaction at how decent totals like 160 and 180 have been competitive, at how the slowness of the Indian tracks is causing the likes of Gilchrist, Symonds and other hitters to struggle, at how, once again, a lot of young Indian players (Saurabh Tiwary, Manish Pandey, Kedar Jadhav, Umesh Yadav, Rajgopal Satish) are making their presence felt and emphasizing the fact that a team in the IPL is as much about the 7 Indian players who take the field as it is about the 4 overseas ones whom the owners have splashed cash to purchase in the high stakes auction. You only have to be supporting the Deccan Chargers to realize the importance of that last point.

But I also have my irritants about the IPL - and you shall notice almost none of them relate to cricket. Why do we need advertisements between deliveries in an over is beyond me. The only time I look forward to them is when Sivaramakrishnan has mike close to his mouth. Also, I have realized that the mute button on my TV remote has a perfect positive co-relation with the appearance of Navjot Sidhu on the screen. This time around he has a new mate in Boria Majumdar at Times Now, who after a losing his patience and opportunity to speak in the first few episodes has now decided to keep rattling along just as Sidhu does. The end result is that there is more pandemonium in that show than even in zero hour of Parliament. But of course, Sidhu would not know about that. His was one of the lowest attendances in the previous Lok Sabha.

What I also fail to understand is the complete loss of proportion when it comes to describing the action on the screen. Either the commentators have written contractual obligations that say that every wicket is a moment of success, every six has to be described as a DLF Maximum and every catch is of 'Kamaal' or they have simply forgotten how to use adjectives. I wonder what the case really is since I have noticed both Harsha Bhogle and the slyly sarcastic Ian Bishop refraining from gratifying Lalit Modi's principal sponsors too frequently.

The only silver lining with respect to the IPL coverage is CNN-IBN's late night show with Cyrus and his silly jokes and Harsha Bhogle with his matter of fact analysis that escapes most of his colleagues in the commentary box. The others either shout and scream ala Messrs Sidhu and Bor(e)ia or just seem disinterested (NDTV, with their 'expert' Ajay Jadeja going on a holiday in the second half of the tournament).

Other than that, the last few days have been about the highly relevant national icons Mr.Amitabh Bachchan and soon to be the second Mrs.Shoaib Malik. Now as far as Mr.Bachchan is concerned, I can understand his anger. Even I would be irritated if despite all the acting achievements, advertisements and other performance, people deliberately fail to recognize me and get themselves photographed with me. Mr.Bachchan is a free citizen and he has every right to endorse every brand that he likes, whether it is Mulayam Singh Yadav's (and earlier Amar Singh's too) Samajwadi Party or BJP's Narendra Modi - Ok, let me rephrase that - whether it is Uttar Pradesh's development under a benevolent sarkar (UP mein hain dum, crime yahaan hain kum!) or Gujarat's vibrant tourism. The Congress should mind its own business and let the Bachchans alone! What sacrilege to even ignore and question such a national icon!

As for Shoaib and his new wife, I am too bored to write anything. I have never been a fan of both of them, have never admired either their looks or their sporting performances. My only reaction when I heard of this union - rotf...lmao...

tepid aint it....i told you its the summer...it does that to me...

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